me remembered Susan Hornby's
hesitancy and later decision to make the cloak herself, and the worm of
suspicion began to gnaw again.

"If that woman could make something that'd do, what'd she ask for one of
them expensive coats for?" he asked himself. "I guess it's only th' girl
that figures in that deal! I ain't nothin' but th' oats she feeds on
nohow," he reflected, and having once given the thought lodgment it grew
and became the chief stone of the corner.

Our own comes to us, and Josiah Farnshaw had formed the habit of that kind
of thinking. He felt that he was being robbed, and forgot that his
daughter was being befriended, and out of his trip to Topeka got only a
sour distaste for the woman he could clearly see was going to encourage
the child in extravagance. He had never spent so much money on the entire
family in a winter as he had done on that girl, and yet it wasn't enough.
"He'd bet he'd never give 'er another year's schoolin'. She'd come home
an' get a summer school--that's what she'd do. All folks thought about
nowadays was clothes!"

To Elizabeth Farnshaw every day of that busy month was full of unconscious
growth. As soon as Mr. Farnshaw was out of sight, Mrs. Hornby said to
Elizabeth:

"Now, my child, I am going to take up the seams in that basque."

Elizabeth looked down at her "long basque" in dismay; she had striven hard
over that waist and had thought that it would do very well, though
conscious that it had faults. Her face flushed as she answered
reluctantly:

"The seam in the back isn't quite straight, but--I never made one like it
before--and I thought it would do."

"So it would, dear, but it can do better and we've got plenty of time to
fix it. You'll feel ever so much better about it when you see how the
other girls are dressed."

As Aunt Susan snipped and ripped and rebasted the refractory seam,
Elizabeth brought out her little stores of finery to discuss their
artistic features.

"Look," she said, opening a pasteboard box which held her few ribbons. "I
coaxed a long time for that, but I got it." She held up for Aunt Susan's
approval a new Alsatian bow of pink ribbon. "I wanted the wide, but they
didn't have it, so I got a lot of the narrow and hid the joinings in the
pleats. I think it's pretty, don't you?"

Susan Hornby looked at the bow critically, and then seeing Elizabeth's
face cloud over with a suspicion that she did not regard the treasure with
favour, said slowly:

"It